The project Integrated Production of Peach (IPP) began in 1999, in four representative areas of peach crop in Rio Grande do Sul (Pelotas, Serra Gaúcha, Grande Porto Alegre and Campanha Region), with the objective to evaluate agronomically the Integrated Production (IP) system compared with conventional production (CP). The present work has been conducted in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, in five harvests periods (1999-2003), and the evaluations were: production, number of fruits per plant, classification based on the officials indexes for the peach industry, in agreement with the categories: CAT I: > 57 mm; CAT II: 47 - 57 mm and CAT III: 44 - 47mm. In the analysis of the mean production/plant, in the IP was 34.65kg, being larger than the one obtained in the area with CP, where the medium production was 28.88kg. In the same way, for the number of fruits/plant the average production in the IP was 372.86 and in CP was 355.64. The average of fruits classified in the category I (more than 57mm) and in the category II (47 - 57 mm), in the IP system was 57.06% and 40.37%, respectively. In the CP system, in all of the analyzed harvests, the average of fruits in the category I was 37.52% and in the category II was 54.53%. The evaluation of the results showed that the IP system was superior to the CP system, for those parameters, indicating that it is possible to handle the peach orchards according to the Integrated Production.
peach tree; classification; fruit quality
